Wendy Crowley.


shores of Sandy Lake in the Kawarthas. She comes by her talent naturally; her mother is a master gardener down near Burlington, who now concedes the title to Wendy. The student has surpassed the master, she says. The garden is a tapestry of light and


O


shade from the many trees Wendy has installed


to replace the devastation


wrought by the contractors when her gracious two-storey house was built. She has planted red maples that blaze fluorescently in the autumn. Their bril- liant colour is offset by white and blue spruce and gorgeous white pine, some of which are now regenerating them- selves as charming surprises in appro- priate places. She has tried the finicky birches, which don’t always co-operate. A weeping willow planted down by the lake fell victim to a beaver or two, but Wendy loves the beavers so accepted the sacrifice. She has had better luck with a pretty


Katsura tree with its rounded leaves, peeling bark and conical


shape. Her


favourite though is the weeping Serbian spruce, a fantastic tree with pendulous branches that hang from a single leader, creating a slender, spire-like form. Eleven years ago, Wendy optimisti-


cally planted five Eastern redbuds from seed. One has survived and is now five feet tall. This year it rewarded her opti- mism by blooming. All around her, the natural forest of


her 19-acre property of Eastern whitece- dar, balsam, spruce and poplars, and the maples of a sugar bush shelter and protect Wendy and the garden, forming


ver the past 13 years, Wendy Crowley has carved a lovely garden out of a forest on the


Above: Wendy does very little


container


gardening,


using pots only to fill in spaces where nothing else will grow.


Left: Little sculpture. Below: Taking art to the lake.


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